Dr. William Gibson

Biography

The Gibson Lab utilizes tools from chemical biology to develop novel therapeutic platforms that have the potential to profoundly impact cancer treatment. The lab focuses on challenging areas traditionally considered 'undruggable,' including tumor suppressor proteins, protein localization, and gene regulation. Their goal is to enable new therapeutic capabilities by coupling creative molecular design with mechanistic insight. A major research area involves developing small molecules that directly target tumor suppressors, particularly mutant p53. The lab explores altered stability, abundance, and localization of cancer drivers to design selective therapeutics, employing engineered small molecules to induce degradation, reprogram localization, and trigger toxic gain-of-function effects in mutant contexts. Simultaneously, they are working to develop small molecule platforms that allow for precise control of gene expression by rewiring transcriptional machinery. Bifunctional compounds are used to induce proximity, recruiting chromatin regulators to defined genomic loci for locus-specific activation and repression. The lab increasingly applies these induced proximity platforms to cell therapy applications. It is a collaborative and ambitious research environment that integrates medicinal chemistry, cancer biology, chemical biology, and translational science, welcoming rotation students who wish to work on high-risk, high-reward projects at the intersection of cancer biology and chemical biology.

Research Interests